JAMES SOWERBY,

HIS PUBLICATIONS AND COLLECTIONS

Lawrence H. Conklin

Great
hand-colored mineral books have appeared only rarely in history. James Sowerby produced
two of the finest between 1802 and 1820; his five-volume British Mineralogy and
his two-volume Exotic Mineralogy depicted in color over 1,500 specimens from the
best mineral collections in England. These fascinating and exquisitely rendered books are
justifiably among the most coveted items in all of mineralogical literature.

INTRODUCTION

For the past 40 years I have been fascinated by the superb and beautiful mineral
colorplate works of James Sowerby and his descendants. As I became a serious
book-collector, and then an amateur writer on the history of minerals and books, I
promised myself that one day I would write about this fascinating family and their
mineralogical publications.

James Sowerby, aged 59, with volumes
of his works and the Yorkshire meteorite. Painting by Thomas Heaphy (1816), courtesy
of Mrs. Sara Sowerby.

The two Sowerby mineralogies discussed here are very high on most
mineral-book collectors' lists of desiderata, but with perhaps fewer than one hundred (I
know of only 50 so far) surviving complete copies of British Mineralogy and far fewer (I
know of only 24) of Exotic Mineralogy, only the most affluent, and in the case of the
latter title, the most diligent, collectors will be able to add these works to their
libraries.

The Sowerbys were a family of naturalists, collectors, artists and publishers who, for
more than a century, offered the public, amateur and professional alike, a large selection
of important, original, illustrated works on natural history. Through their accurate
illustration, careful preparation and faithful publishing of these natural history books
the Sowerbys strongly influenced the development of the study and teaching of natural
history in 19th-century Great Britain, especially botany, paleontology and mineralogy. As
a family they wrote and illustrated more than 100 natural history works between the years
1789 and 1897.

JAMES SOWERBY

James Sowerby was born on March 21, 1757, at No. 2 Bolt-in-Tun Passage, off Fleet
Street, in the city of London; he died on the other side of the Thames River, at No. 2-3
Mead Place, Lambeth, on October 25, 1822.

James was the son of John Sowerby, a lapidary, and his wife Arabella Goodspeed. His
father died when James' eldest brother John was still too young to carry on the family
business, which was on the decline owing to the vagaries of fashion involving the use of
semi-precious colored stones which had previously been in great demand.

James studied art at the Royal Academy in London and began making studies of
wildflowers and plants to include in his miniature portraits. This led to an association
with William Curtis (1746-1799), botanist and noted author of the magnificent Flora
Londinensis; or Plates and Descriptions of such Plants as Grow Wild in the Environs of
London (London 1777-1798). Curtis taught him how best to depict plants and their
blossoms. Apparently James hand-colored many of the plates for this Curtis publication
which has been described as "unsurpassed in the history of botanical
illustration" and did the original engravings on copper for a number of them. Copies
of this work are rare today.

While studying at the Royal Academy, James met and became friendly with a fellow
student, Robert De Carle. De Carle invited Sowerby to his home in Norwich where Sowerby
met his youngest sister Anne Brettingham De Carle. They were much attracted to each other
and, in due course, were married. In 1786 they moved into the house in Mead Place, a gift
of the bride's father. The house apparently survived until the bombing of London during
World War II.

They had four children who lived to adulthood, all of whom, it is assumed, at one time
or another during their childhood, helped their father in the production of his books.
Indeed the two eldest sons, James De Carle and George Brettingham, did substantial
original work and research for the family publishing projects, completing much that was
begun by their father, and it is generally assumed that the phrase "(With
Assistance)" printed above the author's name on the titles of British Mineralogy
referred to them. When James Senior died in 1822, James De Carle took up the current
work-in-progress, The Mineral Conchology of Great Britain, and saw it to
completion.

In 1790 James Sowerby started the first of his illustrated works, with the descriptions
supplied by Sir James E. Smith, English Botany; or Coloured Figures of British Plants,
with their Essential Characters, Synonyms and Places of Growth, issued in parts over
23 years, was finished in 1813. This work, considered his most important, is complete in
36 volumes with 2,592 (!) hand-colored plates of British plants. Buyers of this work today
must exercise extreme caution. Because of its popularity, editions were published over
many years, sometimes with images produced from worn out plates, parts from earlier
editions and other bibliographic nightmares.

The second edition of this work was merely a restrike of the first, and mixed editions
were routinely produced. Sets of the final edition (usually in 13 volumes of quarto size,
with 1,936 plates), designated the third edition, appeared as late as 1892, and were
illustrated with crude lithographic (albeit hand-colored) copies of Sowerby's original
engravings. There are also pirated editions.

Sowerby's second most important publication, Mineral Conchology of Great Britain, or
Coloured Figures and Descriptions of those Remains of Testaceous Animals, or Shells which
have been Preserved at Various Times, and Depths in the Earth (London l812-1846), is
actually a work of invertebrate paleontology (a term that had not yet come into use in
Sowerby's day) and it recorded, for the first time, many index fossils found in England.
This publication secured, certainly for his lifetime, Sowerby-the-artist's credentials as
a serious student of the geological sciences. This work, too, was issued in parts, over a
34 year period (the final parts were produced by James De Carle with the help of George
Brettingham), and when complete (as issued), contains 650 colored plates, each with a
letter-press description, in seven volumes. It is recorded that two unauthorized (or
pirated) editions of this work were produced by Louis Agassiz, the first in French in 1837
and the second in German in 1845.

In addition Sowerby supplied the 19 plates for William Smith's Strata Identified by
Organized Fossils (London, 1816), known popularly as Smith's Strata. He, and
then later his family, produced the colored plates for most of the eleven editions of John
Mawe's Familiar Lessons on Mineralogy and Geology (London, l819 through 1829) and
Mawe's Treatise On Diamonds and Precious Stones. Sowerby almost certainly also
produced for Mawe the one quarto-sized, hand colored, engraving of mineral specimens for Travels
in the Interior of Brazil (London, 1812), although it is unsigned. (Interestingly, no
colored plate accompanies the first American edition of this work published in
Philadelphia in 1816, although it is similar to the London edition in every other way.)

The two Sowerby works to be discussed here are British Mineralogy: Or Coloured
Figures Intended to Elucidate the Mineralogy of Great Britain (London, 1804-1817) and Exotic
Mineralogy: Or Coloured Figures of Foreign Minerals as a Supplement to British Mineralogy
(London, 1811-1820).

Both the British and Exotic mineralogies were published originally in
"parts" or periodical issues, and were sold by subscription. The publishers also
offered complete sets of the works after all the parts had been produced. These normally
show up bound, with the addition of suitable title-pages and indices. The completed works
are usually found in five volumes for the British and two for the Exotic,
each volume carrying its individual title-page, although other binding variants are known.
At least one ten-volume set (five volumes of plates and five of text) exists and many sets
were bound, perhaps much later, in a mineral chemistry format with no regard to Sowerby's
numerical order. Complete "parts" of both works have survived in their original
printed paper covers or "wrappers." (See the illustration here of Part I of ExoticMineralogy in original wrappers, which is a presentation copy from James Sowerby to
The Linnean Society of London, of which he was a fellow.) Evidence that at least some of
the bound volumes began their life as "parts" can be observed by noticing the
remains of the "stab holes" from the original stitching of the parts, if these
holes were not later trimmed away by the binder.

Inscribed wrapper

James Sowerby was a careful, meticulous and observant artisan and this
is evident in the quality of the workmanship of the drawings he produced and the
copperplates that he personally engraved and etched. The fine detail achievable by such
drawing is, even to this day, preferred in some instances (medical, for one) to the most
exacting photography. Indeed, in Arthur W. G. Kingsbury's article "Some minerals of
special interest in South-West England" reprinted from Present Views on Some
Aspects of the Geology of Cornwall and Devon (Truro, 1964), we read that Sowerby, with
Tab. 134 on pages 63-64 of British Mineralogy, while figuring and describing
wavellite, noticed and very carefully depicted "small dark circles" of a mineral
that Dr. Kingsbury only recently determined to be variscite. This species was not
described until more than 30 years after the Sowerby plate, in 1837. It is extremely rare
in Great Britain.

Engraved copper plate
531

Uncolored print

Handcolored print

Sowerby's technique for producing the plates was relatively simple: The
copperplate-engraved outline of the mineral image was printed, usually in black ink (in a
few instances colored inks were used), on an octavo-sized sheet of paper; and was then
hand-tinted within the printed outlines using watercolor paints. It has been stated that
Sowerby ran, in effect, a production line, with artisans (some family members, some paid
employees) each applying one color to the print and then passing it on to the next person
for the application of the next color and so on. This apparently is not so, as suggested
by the survival of sets of completely colored original "pattern plates" (done by
Sowerby himself and some marked with "directions to the colourist") for each of
two different sets of his works. These treasures were actually offered for sale by Bernard
Quaritch Ltd. in their catalog Supplementa Sowerbiana; Or a Catalogue of Books and
Manuscripts Written or Illustrated by Members of the Sowerby Family, compiled by John
Collins and issued as a supplement to their Catalog No.894 (London, 1969). The set for Mineral
Conchology, almost complete with 643 of 650 plates, was priced at $86.40, and was
still available for sale in July, 1971! The production line tradition may have gotten its
start from the fact that the Sowerby children were, at first, allowed only to paint the
"dirt" (the background area at the base under the specimens in some plates)
until they were capable of more skilled work. In any case, each family member had his or
her own table or desk, colors, brushes and a cupboard of drawers in which to store
supplies.

A comparison of the same colored plate in different copies of the same work sometimes
shows a very slight variation in quality as, apparently, some colorists were more skillful
than others. On the other hand, if we examine the first plates in British Mineralogy,
executed in 1802, and compare them with the final examples of Exotic Mineralogy
done almost 20 years later; we notice that the same very high standards of quality were
maintained over this very long period.

One of Sowerby's surviving original copperplates is currently in my own collection. It
has been framed with an original printer's proof (in which the plate came wrapped), and a
modern restrike of the plate which has been colored by hand. It is Tab. (or Plate) 531, a
depiction of toadstone, an amygdaloidalbasalt, from British
Mineralogy. It is quite well worn from its being printed many times, and the printed proof
actually shows more detail than now remains on the copperplate! Nevertheless, the very
careful engraving skills of James Sowerby can be appreciated at first glance. It is signed
and dated in the plate-"J.S. scps, [sculpsit, Latin for engraved] 1816."

In placing the era in which James Sowerby worked and assembled his collection of
minerals in historical context, it should be remembered that at the time of the
publication of the first part of British Mineralogy in 1802, mineralogy was
virtually the exclusive preserve of medical doctors, and chemists were just beginning to
analyze minerals.

Abraham Gottlob Werner (1749-l817), "the father of mineralogy," was still to
have 15 productive years at Freiberg in which to enhance his reputation; Renť Just HaŁy
(l743-1826), the "founder of mathematical crystallography," was to continue
publishing his mineralogical research for another 20 years. Indeed in America, 1802 was
the year of the legendary pilgrimage in which Benjamin Silliman of Yale College in New
Haven, Connecticut, was obliged to take that institution's mineral collection "in a
candle box," to faraway Philadelphia in order to have the minerals properly
identified by Adam Seybert and the other experts there.

At this time books were the primary (and in some cases, the only) sources of scientific
information, and these books were often purposefully written in a style which attempted to
involve the reader. Sowerby's works were no exception, and his readers responded by
supplying him with specimens and pertinent information. Sowerby's publications acted as a
clearing-house, as it were, for observations and discoveries among the small number of
geologists, mineralogists and botanists, who were widely scattered and who had little
opportunity to exchange their ideas or many of their specimens. Philip Rashleigh, author
of Specimens of British Minerals, Selected from the Cabinet of Philip Rashleigh, of
Menabilly, in the County of Cornwall (two volumes, London 1797 and 1802), actually
stated that he was dependent upon the Sowerbys for news of minerals. Indeed, Arthur Aikin,
in the preface to his A Manual of Mineralogy (London, l814), stated- "For some
of these [mineral] localities I am indebted to Mr. Sowerby's elegant work on 'British
Mineralogy illustrated with coloured plates.'"

The accumulated specimens that Sowerby used in his works took on, more and more, the
appearance of a museum, and in 1796 he was obliged to add a room to the rear of his house
in which to store them. It was Sowerby's plan to have, eventually, a complete collection
of the natural history of Great Britain. In a letter now in the British Museum (Natural
History), Sowerby described his "museum" as "some thousands of minerals,
many not known elsewhere, a great variety of fossils, most of the plants of English
Botany about 500 preserved specimens or models of fungi, quadrupeds, birds, insects,
&c. all the natural production of Great Britain." In a printed prospectus of 1821
Sowerby reminded the public that "a fire is kept in the Museum every Thesday during
the winter; from eleven o'clock 'til four;" but his museum did not remain intact very
long after his death in 1822. His original plan of creating a major public institution was
attempted by his sons. Indeed, James de Carle Sowerby (1787-1871) was eminently capable of
following in his father's footsteps. Along with his friend Michael Faraday (1791-1867), he
studied under Sir Humphrey Davy (1778-1829), the inventor of the Davy lamp and in whose
honor the mineral species davyne was named. His knowledge of chemistry led him to
propose a classification of minerals according to their chemical composition, and to this
end he analyzed many specimens published in British Mineralogy and Exotic
Mineralogy. A notice in Mineral Conchology printed in 1827 stated that
"tickets for admission to study in Sowerby's Museum and Library may be had at 10s
each for three months, or £2 per annum." It should be kept in mind that Sowerby's
"Museum" always sounded more formal when it was referred to in print than it was
in fact. In any case by 1831 it ceased to exist.

It is not clear what the final disposition of all the minerals was, but a manuscript
draft dated April, 1831 exists in the British Museum (Natural History), stating in part
that it is ". . . necessary for the purpose of completing some family arrangements to
dispose of the above splendid Collection, the result of forty year's labour, Messrs. J.
& E. Sowerby, the administrators have determined to open it [the museum] for Private
Sale, on Monday the 18th of this month." On June 23, 1831, the Stevens' Auction Rooms
sold the remaining portion of the collection of minerals, stones, etc. In 1861 the Mineral
Conchology collection of figured specimens, some 5,000 pieces, was sold to the British
Museum for £400. It should be noted that this transaction was for "the general"
but not, presumably, the entire collection.

In 1934 some Sowerby descendants offered to sell to the British Museum (Natural
History) a group of mineral specimens that they called the "Sowerby Collection."
The museum trustees suggested the nominal price of £50 for the lot, which was promptly
accepted by the heirs. Included in this collection were five mineral specimens that had
been depicted in British Mineralogy, calculated by the buyers to be worth nine shillings,
or $2.25, each.

The list of lenders and donors of specimens to Sowerby and his museum reads like a
mineralogical "Who's Who." We see such names as:

Other notable lenders were: Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820), president of the Royal
Society; the Hon. Charles Francis Greville (1749-1809); and "Mrs. Mawe," the
wife of John Mawe (1764-1829), author of Travels in the Interior of Brazil; Familiar
Lessons on Mineralogy; and A Treatise on Diamonds and Precious Stones, etc.
John Mawe opened a mineral shop in 1811 after returning from a voyage to Brazil. When Mawe
died in 1829 the business was carried on by his apprentice, James Tennant (1808-1881), who
then succeeded him.1

____________________________________________________________

1 James Tennant began his apprenticeship with Mawe when he was 16 years of
age and was only 21 when Mawe died. In 1838 he was appointed a teacher at King's College,
and later became professor of mineralogy there. By 1840 he had become "mineralogist
to queen Victoria" and was curator of the Baroness Burdett-Coutts mineral collection.
Tennant is probably best remembered for his supervision of the recutting of the famous
"Koh-i-noor" diamond. Recent writers have questioned the year of his birth, even
though it is listed as 1808 in The Dictionary of National Biography (British). In
my library, however is a copy of a photograph of Professor Tennant on which he has
recorded his nativity data in holograph, and signed as follows- "James Tennant Born
Feb. 8. 1808. at Upton near Southwell, Notts." This photo was formerly in the files
of George F. Kunz and was given to him by one of his many correspondents who has inscribed
it thus-"Above is Prof. Tennant's autograph, written when he gave me the photograph
in the classroom at King's College, London after his lecture, 17th March 1870. [signed
James T. B. Ives."

BRITISH MINERALOGY

British Mineralogy: Or Coloured
Figures Intended to Elucidate the Mineralogy of Great Britain is complete with 550
hand-colored plates of minerals and rocks, all, presumably, executed on copper by James
Sowerby, and each accompanied by a letter-press discussion of the depicted subject, also
by Sowerby. The importance of British Mineralogy in its time cannot be overstated. Today
it is still considered the supreme work of British topographical mineralogy. It is
certainly the most ambitious colorplate work on minerals ever published, and with its 550
plates is many times more extensive than its nearest rival.

The work was originally issued in parts, called numbers, between 1802 and 1817. From an
almost complete and probably unique set in original wrappers in the Obodda Library, the
dates of issue of the numbers with their respective plates are listed on Table 1. The
Obodda copy is highly important because, to the best of my knowledge, the information that
is unique to it has never before been published. (See the discussion of Exotic
Mineralogy for similar information for that work which has previously been published.)
In B. B. Woodward's Catalogue of Library British Museum (Natural History)
(1982) we read that: "The text at first was not always issued with the illustrations.
In the copy of Vol. I [in wrappers] referred to above, it was obviously not all in the
original state of issue. . . ." The publishers left it to the subscribers to collate
the work. Eventually that problem was corrected, and by the year 1811, and the start of
the publication of Exotic Mineralogy, the text and corresponding plates were being
issued together.

Some specimen illustrations fromBritish Mineralogy

On the front wrapper of No. I is the following:

"It was at first intended to
have given a brief Catalogue of a valuable Collection which the author has been so
fortunate as to procure; but, finding it necessary for that purpose to make Sketches of
the various Fractures and Crystallizations of the Mineral Bodies in question, he has been
advised to publish such Representations. To this advice he has the more readily consented,
as he will, perhaps, be stimulated to proceed with more assiduity. The figures will be
executed from actual Specimens, and the interesting Parts made conspicuous. The
letter-press will be as intelligible as possible. References will be made to scientific
Authors, especially Linnaeus, as far as can conveniently be done."

Printed on the rear wrapper is the following:

"The descriptions will be
published occasionally, about Two Sheets at a Time, as a single Sheet is subject to a
Stamp Duty. It is expected to publish another Number, or more, while the Letter-press is
preparing. The first Number is an Example of the Execution of the Figures, and the whole
is intended as a Companion to English Botany. Any Information, or Specimens, with Habitats
&c. will be gratefully received, and duly remembered."

The price of each number (or part) started out, in 1802, at 3 shillings and 6 pence,
and with number XXXI on June 1,1805 the price jumped to 5 shillings.That price was
maintained at least until number LXXVII (which brought the subscribers well into the fifth
and final volume) in November of 1813.

The first of the five title pages supplied by the publisher was issued in 1804, and
bears that date, although the work was begun and the first number or part was issued two
years earlier in 1802. It covers the first volume of 100 plates and descriptions. The
succeeding title pages are dated 1806, 1809, 1811 and 1817. It is assumed that there was
never a "book" edition separately published, and that all
completed sets of the work were bound up from the parts with perhaps some parts reprinted
as needed. Most of the subscribers acceded to the five volume format intended by the
publisher. Complete sets of British Mineralogy are, however, considered rare in the
book trade today, with shorter sets being the examples most usually offered for sale. Any
publication extending over 15 years will surly have lost a number of its original
subscribers along the way, and the sets they were assembling would end up incomplete.

Sowerby's attempt at perfection in the production of British Mineralogy is clearly
demonstrated by an announcement on the front wrapper of Part No. XXVI of December 1, 1804.
He states that included in this part is a new leaf of text and description that is to be
substituted for pages 129 and 130 "which must be canceled." The reason was that
page 129 (a right-hand page) was originally blank on the back, so that page 130 (also
blank on the back) was a right-hand page, although even-numbered pages traditionally
belong on the left-hand side. Sowerby corrected this esthetically unpleasing situation by
eliminating the two blank pages with the substitution of the new leaf. His wishes,
however, were not always carried out by the subscribers when the completed set of parts
was finally bound. This is, technically, not a "point of issue," however, since
all the subscribers were issued the cancel and were free to decide on whether to employ it
or not.

The work also contained advertisements, of which the following, quoted from Volume
Five, is an interesting example:

MINERALOGYANDGEOLOGY.

The rapid progress
these Sciences are making in England, leads us to hope that we shall soon equal the Savans
on the continent. Mr. MAWE, No.149, Strand, informs those who are desirous of becoming
acquainted with these useful branches of Natural History, that they may be supplied with
any specimens they want, or Collections classed and arranged, at from 2 to 50 guineas. Mr.
MAWE has connexions in all the Mining districts of Europe,Brazil, North America, Ceylon,
&c. from whence he receives the finest productions of those countries, and being
concerned in several Mines in this kingdom, he regularly receives their finest produce;
which, connected with his Manufactory in Derby, for forming Vases, &c. of the
beautiful Fluor of that county, he is enabled to vend Minerals on the most reasonable
terms.

New Descriptive Catalogue, price 3s.

The best Books on
the subjects of Mineralogy, Geology, and Conchology, and whatever relates to those
Sciences.

Incidentally, the leaf on which the above advertisement appears was almost always
removed when the parts were permanently bound, and it is known today, apparently, in but a
single example!2

________________________________________________________

2 The copy of British Mineralogy containing the Mawe advertisement was
listed for sale by William Patrick Watson of London as number 92 in his Catalogue Three.
The price asked was £6000 which, on October 26,1992, equaled $9,500. It is the same copy
listed by Antiquaariat Junk at 19,000 Dutch florins ($12,000), and Mr. Watson informed me
that he and A.J. were partners on the book.

There is, so far, only one bibliographical "point" that has been noted in British
Mineralogy, and that is the misnumbering of Plate 421 as 221 in some copies and the
subsequent correction of this error. Consequently there are first (or early) and second
(or later) issues of the edition. The first or "uncorrected " shows the number
221 engraved on the plate, whereas the second or "corrected issue" bears the
proper number, 421. This information could conceivably be used in a book-seller's catalog
to praise the virtues, real or imagined, of an early (as opposed to a late) impression of
the plate(s). Plates 413 and 415 have had their numbers interchanged in all the copies
that

I have examined, and unless a copy comes to light where this is not the case, this is
not a second "point."

In his introduction to British Mineralogy Sowerby states quite accurately that
the "undertaking [of this work] was begun at a time when we [the British] had but
just become aware of how far we were behindhand in this most essential knowledge, when
even the Diamond, one of the oldest jewels in the known world, had but recently been
discovered to be pure carbon" (by Smithson Tennant in 1796).

One of the most historically
interesting plates in British Mineralogy is "Tab. CCCXXXI. ARGILLA electrica. White
Tourmaline." Depicted is a mass of terminated quartz crystals, in the center of which
is a large, white, prismatic crystal whose rhombohedral nature is clearly indicated by the
two crystal drawings at the bottom of the plate. Sowerby states:

"This substance which seems
almost new to the whole mineralogical world, not being spoken of by any author, was sent
me in 1804. It was said to be found in a mine in St. Justs in Cornwall. I speak of it as
new, being really a white Schorl or Tourmaline; for though Tourmaline is said to occur of
all the colours in mixtures of yellow, red and blue, yet it is not mentioned as ever
having been found colorless or white until now; therefore this is the rarest known."

It was, indeed, rare, except that now we know that Sowerby's "White
Tourmaline" is actually the first description and crystal drawings of the mineral phenakite,
which was not recognized as a new mineral species until its description by Nils
Nordenskjold in 1830. It was named phenakite by him, from the Greek for
"deceiver," alluding to its deceptive appearance. Nordenskjold considered that
it could be confused with quartz however, not tourmaline. Incidentally, in the copy of British
Mineralogy formerly in the library of Richard Hauck, penciled to the right of the
printed words White Tourmaline are "Phenacite" and the initials "AR"
which identify Sir Arthur Edward Jan Montagu Russell (1878-1964), a mineral collector
extraordinary from Great Britain. Russell referred to this plate in 1920 when he wrote a
paper on a later occurrence of phenakite in England. There were a few other such
notations in Russell's holograph, but it could not be determined for certain if this copy
was his very own. Sir Arthur's adventures and his generosity regarding minerals are fully
and warmly covered by Embrey and Symes in their excellent book Minerals of Cornwall and
Devon (London, 1987).

Sowerby can be forgiven for a lapse into nationalism when he stated, near the end of
Volume V of British Mineralogy, in the description of Tab. 548:

"Before closing this work, it
is a pleasure to meet with a triumphant and unexpected example of the produce of a country
[England] hitherto but rarely quoted for any thing fine. The magnificent Tourmalines, of
which I now figure two specimens, may vie with any thing of the kind brought from foreign
climes . . ."

The tourmalines (schorl) from near Bovey Tracey, Devon, are indeed fine
and actually superb (although some British Mineralogy plates depict specimens that
are most unattractive) and in their day, before the tourmaline production from
Brazil and elsewhere, must have created quite a sensation. Incidentally, the specimens
from this occurrence probably rank today as the finest tourmalines ever found in
Great Britain. Their collecting history is most interesting, and Sowerby was informed that
"a barn was built with some of the largest and finest specimens before it was
observed by a Gentleman in the neigbourhood." The barn was pulled down to recover the
minerals from its foundation, and it is recorded that some specimens in private
collections were seen with evidence of mortar remaining on them! A modern depiction of one
of these crystals, the largest known, can be found on page 125 of Minerals of Cornwall
and Devon, cited above.

Excellent apatites were found there too, and they are described separately by
Sowerby in the next plate, Tab. 549. John Mawe wrote a paper "On the Tourmaline and
Apatite of Devonshire" in The Quarterly Journal of Science in 1818. Sowerby
also states in the tourmaline description that he was "favoured with the
choice of Mr. Brooke's and Dr. Somerville's specimens, collected on the spot by them
together." It is apparent that in addition to these pieces, many of the other
specimens illustrated in the 550 plates were part of Sowerby's own collection at the time,
and this might explain the mediocrity of some of them. This assumption becomes more likely
when one compares these less attractive specimens to the examples depicted in Exotic
Mineralogy wherein Sowerby, with the entire world as his territory, could be more
selective without trying to be as comprehensive in the coverage of these foreign
specimens.

In British Mineralogy Sowerby tried to bring some order out of the then-current
mineralogical chaos, and he concocted an elaborate Linnean-style, binomial Latin
classification as the heading for each mineral description. Mineral names were used
infrequently and the chemistry of the mineral was generally listed first, for instance
"Zincum carbonatum," followed by "crystallized Carbonate of Zinc" or
"Zincum oxygenizatum (siliciferum), Silical Oxide of Zinc." Here he added
"Class 3. Metals. Ord. 1 Direct Combinations. Gen. 4 Zinc. Spec. 1 Oxide. Sect. 2.
Silical."

An early visitor to Mead Place, Eric Thomas Svedenstierna (1765-1825) of Sweden, noted
that Sowerby was at that time organizing his mineral collection according to HaŁy's
system. Sowerby gave up completely on his binomial Latin classification in Exotic
Mineralogy. This visitor also noted that Sowerby's collection of minerals was growing
rapidly.

A recent depiction of a fine specimen that was originally Illustrated in British
Mineralogy appears on page 77 of Minerals of Cornwall and Devon, wherein the
authors, in amusing British understatement, inform us:

"This specimen (BM 1976, 246) [chalcocite] was bought in 1976 from the dealer
Brian Lloyd, who acquired it as part of the Neeld collection formed in the early
nineteenth century. It is so closely similar to the one owned by '__ Lounds [should be
Lowndes] Esq.' figured by James Sowerby in his British Mineralogy (1817 vol. 5, Tab.
DXVIII), that it may well be the same ." (Italics added.)

I and others I have consulted are all convinced that this specimen is indeed the
original illustrated specimen.

How interesting it is to study Tabs.
CXXXV and CXXXVI and see two fairly easy-to-identify examples of what Sowerby called
"PLUMBUM cupreoantimoniatum sulphureum" and to read further that Jacques Louis,
Count de Bournon 1751-1825) had determined much of their habits of crystallization. We
are, of course, looking at examples of the mineral which, shortly after the Sowerby
depiction, was named bournonite by Robert Jameson in 1805.

Although the nature of meteorites was not fully understood in the early 19th century,
James Sowerby knew full well the value to his public of anything new and unusual, and to
the best of his ability he exploited one of the first recorded English falls, "The
Yorkshire Meteorite." This famous stone fell, duly observed, at approximately 3 p.m.
on Sunday, December 13, 1795, and was fully appreciated by the owner of the property on
which it landed, one Major Edward Topham,who even went so far as to erect a tablet at the
site of the fall which read as follows:

Here
On this Spot,
December 13th 1795, fell from the Atmosphere
An extraordinary Stone!
In Breadth 28 inches,
In Length 30 inches,
and
Whose weight was 56 pounds!
This Column
In memory of it was erected by
Edward Topham
1799

Apparently, by 1804 this "extraordinary stone" had become the property of
James Sowerby and his Museum for "the Sum of Ten Guineas [ten and one half pounds] to
be paid [to Edward Topham] at present and the Work [British Mineralogy] complete of the
first Impression of the Plates and elegantly bound and lettered" according to the
terms put down in a letter from Edward Topham to James Sowerby, dated November 1. What
would a book-collector of today give to own (or even to see) that particular set, all
"elegantly bound and lettered"? Most sets known to this writer that have
survived in their contemporary coverings (not the paper wrappers, of course) have been
rather modestly bound, usually in 1/2 or 3/4 leather with decorated, usually marbled,
paper-covered boards. The most "elegantly bound" copy that I know of is a fine,
tall set in full contemporary stiff vellum with gilt lettering and gilt decoration that
retains the bookplates of the Earl of Tyrconnel.

Of course, Topham had to wait 13 years until the completion of British Mineralogy
in 1817 to have this deal consummated, and, assuming he got his set promptly, he lived to
enjoy it for only 3 years. However, this cash and barter deal proved to be a good
investment, indeed, for the Sowerbys. In addition to the obvious value of the meteorite's
presence in the family museum and all the publicity it garnered for more than 30 years,
the British Museum purchased it from them in 1837 for the sum of £250. The price is
believed by modern-day experts to have been an exorbitant one for its time, and perhaps
this account waited to be balanced out by those 9-shilling specimens illustrated in British
Mineralogy that were sold by the Sowerby descendants almost 100 years later!

Today, the "Wold cottage chondrite," as the Yorkshire meteorite is now
called, weighs only 45.5 pounds, down from its original weight of 56 pounds. It is known
from correspondence in the British Museum (Natural History) that Sowerby exchanged
fragments that be broke off this meteorite for natural history specimens sent to him by
his correspondents. Sowerby relates the story of this meteorite in great detail in British
Mineralogy, including a long account of it by Topham, as part of a 19-page discussion
(his longest) with Tab. CI.

A watercolor portrait of James Sowerby (see illustration) rendered by Thomas Heaphey
(1775-1835) in the year 1816, and still in the possession of his descendants, shows him
seated with volumes from his English Botany, British Mineralogy, and Exotic Mineralogy.
Also depicted is a large crystal model and, dominating the painting, apparently still most
prestigious after more than 20 years, even with its rather fresh looking
(Sowerby-inflicted?) broken surfaces, The Yorkshire meteorite.

Sowerby's goal was to produce a complete popular mineralogy based on British specimens
alone, but eventually realizing that not every mineral then known could be found in
England, and that some might never be found there, he began a second series of mineral
copper-plates and descriptions in order to complete his plan; he called it Exotic
Mineralogy, the "exotic" meaning from outside Britain.

EXOTIC MINERALOGY

Exotic Mineralogy: Or Coloured
Figures of Foreign Minerals, as a Supplement to British Mineralogy was also issued in
parts, between 1811 and 1820 as enumerated in Table 2. The index to Exotic Mineralogy
was sent to the subscribers in 1835.

The information in Table 2 is based on a nearly complete and probably unique set in
original wrappers in the British Library. It lacks only the final part or parts after
number 27 and the index; the information above is taken from the Woodward catalog. Number
17 was, in effect, a double number as it included the final text and plates for Volume I
and the first text and plates for Volume II. It was at this time that Sowerby projected
completing a total of 33 parts, but never reached that number. Because no part in wrappers
later than Number 27 has survived it is not clear whether one or two parts completed the
work. In either case, there were 10 more pages (141-151) and six more plates
(CLXIV-CLXIX).

Specimen illustrations from Exotic Mineralogy

The wording of the title as it appears on the first wrapper is slightly
different (and, I think, a little better than that used on the book title pages): Exotic
Mineralogy: Or Coloured Figures of Such Foreign Minerals as are Not Likely to he Found in
Great Britain, as a Supplement to British Mineralogy, Making Together a Complete
Mineralogical Cabinet. On the front cover of this first wrapper Sowerby made his pitch:
"As Cabinets of Foreign Minerals . . . often contain very magnificent specimens or
particular rarities, and as these are in the hands of private individuals, Mr. S. takes
the liberty to observe, that he will be grateful for any assistance or information."

Exotic Mineralogy is complete with 167 colored plates, plus one uncolored
plate, for a total of 168, with letter-press descriptions for each, although most
bibliographies including a most recent one call for 169 plates. No plate numbered 73 was
ever issued, and on the rear of the wrapper for Part XVI the author explains why:
"This plate [93] was formerly intended to have been published as tab. 73, but more
figures being required, the two plates of Turquoise are numbered in succession, 92 and
93." In some copies of this work the turquoise plate was printed bearing the original
engraved number "73" and was not changed to the corrected number "93"
until sometime later; thus creating the first and second issues of this edition. The
first, or "uncorrected issue" retains the original engraved number 73 and the
second or "corrected issue" displays "93"-a "point" to be
looked for if one wishes.

Exotic Mineralogy, because of its 167 colored plates, is second in importance
only to Sowerby's own earlier work, British Mineralogy, in the mineral color-plate
book category, and had that work never been published, Exotic Mineralogy would be the most
significant publication ever in terms of size, scope and quality of workmanship. In
my opinion, the only possible comparable works are Rashleigh's Specimens Of British
Minerals (1797-1802), containing only 54 (albeit, quarto-sized) color-plates and,
perhaps, but to a significantly lesser degree, the color-plate German language works Das
Mineralreich in Bildern (1858) by J. G. Kurr, and F A. Schmidt's Mineralienbuch
(1850). On the rear wrapper of Part XVII of Exotic Mineralogy, in a notice from the
publisher, we read:

"It being necessary to form
two volumes of this work, which will be completed in sixteen more Numbers [a total never
reached] we recommend the possessors of it to have the first volume put in boards without
cutting [the edges of the pages], that the two may be arranged according to an Index which
will be given in the last Number."

So, it would be reasonable to expect to find an occasional Volume I of Exotic in
contemporary boards, and I know of, but have not examined, such a volume. Incidentally,
the subscribers to Exotic Mineralogy did not receive a printed index until fifteen
years after receiving the final part. A separate index, including an
"advertisement," was supplied by the Sowerbys in 1835, with instructions that it
was to be bound at the end of Volume II. It is not surprising, therefore, that we find
copies of the work complete but with the index lacking.

By the time of the completion of Volume I of Exotic, Sowerby had noticed two
problems that we today see occasionally in his works, namely the off-setting of the
pigments and gum-arabic from the plates, sometimes resulting in their adhering to adjacent
leaves; and the off-setting of the ink from the letter-press descriptions. So, he
cautioned his subscribers (and their binders) with a half-page note-from-the-publisher
included in Number 17, which note, incidentally, is a rare survival. I know of only two
copies. Such a note would have been routinely removed when the volume was permanently
bound. It states:

One of the plates in this Number
[Tab. 104, a large Chessy, France azurite, richly colored with blue pigment and coated
with gum arabic for luster] being from necessity coloured with a substance very
deliquescent in its nature, renders it particularly proper at this season of the year to
caution our Readers against suffering the book to be laid in a damp place . . . [and to]
keep the Numbers always in a dry place . . . give directions to Binders never to damp or
beat [which is excessive flattening of the sheets off the volumes . . . but only to
dry-press them well, as from their [the binders'] ignorance, coloured prints are
frequently spoiled, and by their beating, the letterpress commonly sets off on the plates.

In some of the numbers of the copy of British Mineralogy in-parts in the Obodda
library, are tissue-guards presumably supplied by the publisher; but which would have been
removed during binding. In an almost complete Volume I of Exotic in parts are no
surviving tissue guards. Most mineral-book collectors of my acquaintance, when confronted
with off-setting, and the occasional stuck-down plate, simply assume that Sowerby stacked
wet painted plates or wet inked text sheets together.

Exotic Mineralogy is, for some yet-to-he discovered reason, a much rarer work
than British Mineralogy on the antiquarian book market. In one series of entries,
extracted by a bibliophile from booksellers' catalogs between the 1940's and the 1980's,
complete copies of British were available for sale fifteen times whereas
only a single offering of Exotic was present. And this becomes even more
surprising when one considers that Exotic, in only two volumes was much easier to
complete than its companion work. The legendary George Frederick Kunz library, now at the
United States Geological Survey, owns only the first volume (although the Kunz copy may
have been complete originally). It has been suggested that the nationalistic pride that
resulted from their seeing native minerals depicted in British Mineralogy prompted
gentlemen of the period to become subscribers, and that the exotic (or foreign) specimens
were, simply, of significantly less interest to them. But, if one is to take Sowerby at
his word, he seemed quite satisfied with sales of the book, and he wrote in the preface of
Volume II of Exotic in 1817 that:

"It was under the impression
that about 100 plates of Minerals not known in Great Britain would have been a sufficient
Appendix to British Mineralogy, for the student, that I commenced this work; but
since 1811 so many new species and strongly marked varieties have crowded upon me, and
so anxious have been my friends to see every thing extraordinary commemorated. . . I trust
that the utility of the work having been acknowledged by the reception the first volume
has met with . . . [italics added) will render it equally interesting, and make the
extension acceptable."

All should agree that these are not the words of an author-publisher who is unhappy
with the reception of his work by the public. Perhaps the answer will never be known.

Sowerby's introductory remarks in the preface of Volume I of Exotic are also of
interest:

It was under rather peculiar
disadvantages that my work upon British Minerals with figures was begun, as Mineralogy was
considered merely as an appendage to Chemistry, and it was thought that figures would not
elucidate it; but Mineralogy has now gained more importance, [perhaps due in part to the
success and popularity of British Mineralogy] and figures have been found much to
facilitate the study of that, as well as of the other branches of science. It is almost
enough that a Mineralogist should know how far this empire is blessed with native
Minerals, which since my work has been in its progress, are so much augmented, that but
few are to be added, even from the whole remaining part of the globe. Indeed most former
English authors, depending chiefly upon foreign information, did not know what was to he
found at home; thus while the British Minerals require five or six volumes, the Exotic
ones may he figured sufficiently complete in only one more, perhaps. The little catalogue
[Catalogue of British Minerals, Chiefly in the Collection of James Sowerby London, 1811]
which I have just published will serve to show this, and as I do not profess to enter
largely into a collection of Exotic Minerals, I am happy to say that the generosity of
those who possess the most perfect Cabinets fully supersede the necessity of so doing.

Although Sowerby stated that he did not want to collect foreign minerals, at least on
the same scale as his British minerals, apparently he had many. It can be safely assumed
that he was extremely careful in giving full credit to whomever supplied a specimen for
illustration, yet for many of the depicted specimens he cited nothing in the way of
provenance, leaving the reader to assume that those specimens were his own.

Upper plate: The original pyrargyrite
specimen (right), now in the collection of Steven Smale, and the corresponding image in Exotoc
Mineralogy (plate 33). The specimen, probably from Saxony, measures 7.7 cm.
Sowerby borrowed it from the collection of his friend W. Edmund Rundell.
Sowerby drew the image (correctly) on the engraving plate, but the resulting print
is a reverse image. All Sowerby plates are mirrror images of the original specimens.
Photo by Jeff Scovil.

Lower plate:
Crocoite form Berezov, Russia (plate 4) "the best part of" a specimen
form the collection of Charles Greville.

The death in 1809 of the Honorable Charles Francis Greville (a mineral collector
extraordinary and one of Sowerby's closest colleagues), during the time of the writing of Exotic
Mineralogy, apparently gave the author some very nervous moments. We read in the
description to Tab. IV:

"This beautiful specimen [of
crocoite is] from the mine of Berezof, near Catherinbourg, in Siberia. The remarkable
richness of colour that it possesses is nearly peculiar to itself, and is very
characteristic of the truly orange and scarlet. Specimens so fine as the present are very
valuable; this is the best part [italics added] of a superb one in the Collection
of my late friend the Hon. Charles Greville, whose liberality invited me to partake of his
matchless cabinet, with the pleasantest freedom, and I am happy to show this [the
crocoite] as a proof of his generosity, which may be seen also in British Mineralogy
and as our Government has secured them [the Greville minerals] in the British Museum, I
may still hope to find a continuance of such favors." (Italics added.)

Apparently Sowerby's fears were groundless, and he stated in the preface to Volume I,
which was written after the crocoite description:

"The first subject begun for
this work. viz. the superb Chromate of Lead [crocoite], was drawn at my much to be
lamented friend's, the Hon. Charles Greville, and I depended greatly on his matchless
collection, and by application to the Trustees of the British Museum, who have so
honorably interested themselves in securing this treasure to their country; I have to
thank them for the free access to it which I now enjoy." (Italics added.)

Sowerby, for artistic purposes, often illustrated only parts of certain specimens, as
noted above, without so indicating, and took other liberties in his illustrations, such as
restoring or idealizing broken or incomplete crystals; one case in point is tab. CXVII,
sulfur, surely one of the prize engravings of Exotic Mineralogy. In the description
the author tells us that he "selected for this purpose the most magnificent group of
crystals [of sulfur] ever brought to England; but as the mass upon which they repose is
very broad, I have omitted a great portion of it, using principally the central parts, and
condensing them a little." (Italics added.)

The Greville collection was a very important one and its sale to the British Museum was
reported by Archibald Bruce in number 2 of his American Mineralogical Journal
published in New York City in 1811. The article, on page 122, is as follows:

Mr. Greville's Cabinet.

"This splendid collection of
minerals has been lately purchased by the British government for 13,727£. sterling, and
now forms a part of their National Museum. The commissioners appointed to examine and
value this cabinet, in their report to the committee of the House of Commons, concurred
unanimously in giving a public testimony of the merits and services of Count Bournon, to
whose exertions and talents the systematic arrangement of this collection is due."

Bruce also reported that Greville had purchased the "celebrated" mineral
collection of Baron von Born, brought it to England, and "afterwards added an immense
number of minerals from every part of the globe. . . . Thus his collection, before his
death, had become, for the beauty of the specimens and their immense variety the first
in the world." (Italics added.)3

One of the great treasures of the Greville collection was pictured by Sowerby in Exotic
as Thb. LXXXIX. It is a marvelous group of tourmaline crystals from Ava (Burma), that was
valued at the time at the very significant sum of £500! It is so large that Sowerby, in
order to show the great specimen at natural size, was forced to engrave it on a
double-sized copperplate, and he then had to fold the resulting print to fit it in the
book.

______________________________________________________

3 For some reason, Greville, whose older brother was the very important
Earl of Warwick and who was a nephew of Sir William Hamilton (1730-1806), author of the
magnificent Campi Phlegraei, or Observations on the Volcanoes of the Two Sicilies .
. (Naples, 1776) with more than 50 magnificent hand-colored plates, is not listed in the
British Dictionary of National Biography. Archibald Bruce may have cited the reason when
he wrote in his American Mineralogical Journal- "It may be easily supposed, that with
the name and influence of the house of Warwick, the genius of such a man as Mr. Greville
would not leave untried the more usual walks of ambition: but having sided against the
Court [the King] in the memorable American war [of the Revolution] he lost
its favour, [italics added] and philosophy had him for her own [that is, he was denied
the political offices that would normally have been offered to a person of his social
position]. He did not however; refuse to his country the knowledge of his comprehensive
mind." Or, perhaps the D.N.B. simply missed him.

For Exotic Mineralogy Sowerby dropped his awkward attempt at mineral
classification, except for the Latin binomial title. In place of the later subdivisions he
listed the various names by which the mineral was known at the time and cited numerous
authorities, such as Bournon, Daubenton, De l'Isle, Emmerling, Hauy, Jameson, Karsten,
Kirwan and Werner.

Sowerby had another opportunity, as he had in British Mineralogy, to discuss
meteorites. In this instance an eight-page summary of the knowledge of the time included,
in the discussion for Tab. 163, a very interesting personal experience as follows:

"Fig. 3. is from my specimen
of the Iron found near the great Fish River; it was obtained at the Cape of Good Hope, and
brought to England by Fichtel . . . [It is known today as the Cape of Good Hope
meteorite.] This is extremely pure and compact; it is considerably harder, but otherwise
much of the texture of Lead it is not elastic when sawn into slices, but is easily
rendered so by hammering; a shaving taken from the surface by a chizel is elastic without
any further operation; it is so ductile and free from flaws that it may readily be rolled
into sheets thinner than paper without cracking; its hardness is such that it takes an
excellent polish, its lustre is superior to that of pure Iron, and its colour nearer that
of silver. These properties rendered it an excellent material for a sword blade,
consequently, upon His Majesty the Emperor of Russia visiting England, I had a slice 2
inches and three-fourths long, 2 inches wide, and nearly three-fourths of an inch thick,
hammered at a low heat into a blade 2 feet long, and 1-1/2 inch wide, which welded into a
steel haft, and mounted, I presented to his Majesty as a memorial of his visit."

The following inscription was engraved on the blade:

"This Iron having fallen from
the Heavens, was upon His visit to England, presented to His Majesty Alexander, Emperor of
all the Russias, who has successfully joined in Battle to spread the blessings of peace
throughout Europe, by James Sowerby F.L.S., Honorary Member of the Physical Society of
Gottingen, &c., June, 1814. [On the other side of the blade was engraved:] Pure
Meteoric Iron found near the Cape of Good Hope."

One wonders what the knifesmiths of today, who believe that they are the originators of
meteoritic iron knife blades, would think if they knew they were merely following a
tradition originated by an Englishman in the year 1814.

Sowerby further remarked that "His Imperial Majesty [Czar Alexander] has expressed
his approbation, by sending me a superb Emerald ring set with Diamonds, for which I feel
Highly grateful." The ring apparently still survives in the hands of a Sowerby
descendant.

For collectors of minerals in general, Exotic Mineralogy is rather more
interesting than the narrower-in-scope, more specialized, British Mineralogy, and many of
the depicted specimens are still highly prized today. For instance, the Colombian emeralds
in Tab. C. (with their locality given as "Peru " of which present-day Colombia
was once a part), certainly two of the finest matrix specimens known, are called by
Sowerby "the pride of the collection at the British Museum." In Tab. CLVIII we
see Kongsberg, Norway, silver specimens that would quicken the pulse of any
modern-day collector.

We can read a little about Sowerby's "network" in Tab. CLXII. Writing of a
rare example of "Argentum (sulphureum) flexile" (= sternbergite) he said that
"the only specimen in England is the one figured; it was found in Mr. Partsch's
cabinet of Minerals at Vienna, among the ores of Tellurium, and was brought to England
with it by my son G. B. [George Brettingham] Sowerby."

Collectors of today know well the usual means of acquiring mineral specimens (that is
field collecting, exchanging and purchasing), but Sowerby, in the description for Tab. XL,
adds an entirely new dimension. He tells of Mr. Allan's (Thomas Allan, 1777 1833, after
whom allanite was named) good fortune in obtaining a collection of Greenland
minerals that were part of the booty on board a Danish vessel captured by a British
privateer. We read later, in the discussion of Tab. LVIII (allanite), that the specimens
belonged originally to Karl Ludwig Giesecke (1761-1833), a German mineralogist. What story
lay behind the fact that in 1813 the very same Thomas Allan described and named gieseckite?
In this description Sowerby gives us some clues as he relates:

"It [the mineral about to be
named allanite] was placed in the hands of Dr. Thomson [Thomas Thomson, (1773-1852), after
whom thomsonite was named] who, having analyzed and described it, gave it a name
after its proprietor [owner; that is, Allan] not knowing at the time the person to whom it
would have been more handsome and more correct to have done that honour [i.e.
Giesecke]."

These were uncharacteristically strong words from Sowerby, and are not equaled
elsewhere in either publication. In Tab. CI. (the description of gieseckite) the
cat is out of the bag, and Sowerby related:

"The persevering researches
of Sir Charles Giesecke, in Greenland, have been productive of several new and many rare
Minerals, some of which a less intelligent Mineralogist would have passed over. The
fortune of war had for some time deprived him of the honour due to his discoveries;
[italics added] but now his merit is every where fully admitted."

There is one enticing and provocative little tidbit in the description to Tab. CXVI in
which the author thanks "Professor Herrmann" for a drawing of (or, possibly, for
the crystal itself) a specimen of "sulphuret of antimony" (= stibnite)
illustrated as part of the plate. It is just barely possible that this is a reference to
Professor Charles W. A. Herrmann (1801-1898), who was the subject of my short article in
the Mineralogical Record (vol. 25, p. 225). C.W.A. Herrmann's obituary states that
he was "educated at the University of Breslau, and turned his attention to the study
of stones with such good effect that after his graduation, he became Professor of
Mineralogy at the university." Since Herrmann was born in 1801 and Tab. CXVI was
published in 1818 he would have been a very young professor indeed, but it is possible and
perhaps he was another one of Sowerby's many correspondents.

Did Sowerby cheat a bit when he included a Welsh specimen in his Exotic
collection? (Or did 19th-century Englanders regard Wales as a foreign country?) In Thb.
LXXXII he described aplome, a variety of garnet, and remarked that "it bears a
considerable resemblance to common Garnet, but is distinguished from it by the striae
along the short diagonals of the faces. . . ." He added, "I am informed by Mrs.
Mawe, from whom the Count [Bournon] obtained it that it was found in digging a well in
some part of North Wales." He apologized by adding, "When I completed British
Mineralogy I had not ascertained this fact." Mrs. Mawe is mentioned elsewhere in this
work as a lender of mineral specimens and seems always to be associated with what we call
today, "thumbnails" or thumbnail-sized minerals. Sowerby took a similar detour
in Tab. CXXX when he discussed a not-too-exotic Scottish staurolite.

Sowerby committed an error in Tab. XXXI, but it was probably only of the typographical
variety. In the description of a specimen of molybdate of lead (wulfenite) from Carinthia,
he refers the reader to a projected plate which he said would be number 158, and which he
said would discuss "yellow phosphates from Wanlock-head mine, near Glasgow." At
that time no plate 158 was even planned and although the number 158 was eventually used by
him, it describes native silver.

American minerals make a very good showing in Exotic Mineralogy when one
considers the primitive state of mineralogy and mineral collecting in America at this
time. They are represented by Tab. VI "Ferrum columbiatum . . . or Columbite," a
specimen that came from an unspecified locality which is thought to be a Connecticut or
Massachusetts pegmatite. According to tradition it was sent to Sir Hans Sloane in London
by the American John Winthrop or possibly his grandson, John Winthrop the Younger, in the
18th century. Tab. LX describes "Ferrum chromiferum" or chromite from a
site near Baltimore, Maryland, which almost certainly must be the Bare Hills. Tab. LXXV
discusses "Magnesia hydrata. Hydrate of Magnesia" or brucite, named later
for Archibald Bruce (1777-1818) who discovered the species and who presented the figured
piece to the British Museum. The description for Tab. LXXXIV, "Zincum oxygenizatum,
Oxide of Zinc" or zincite from the Franklin area in New Jersey notes that its
discoverer was also Archibald Bruce.

Sowerby lavished particular care and attention on the diamond, devoting two
plates to it (Tabs. CXVIII & CXVIX), although the second plate is merely one of
crystal drawings and is uncolored. In the discussion of these plates we learn that the
great blue diamond that was later to be known as the "Hope Diamond" apparently
belonged at that time to "Daniel Eliason, Esq." of London. Mrs. Mawe's cabinet
was again called upon to supply no less than eight of the figured diamond crystals,
gratefully acknowledged, of course, by the author.

BOOK MARKET PRICES

A little bit of the history of the retail pricing of British Mineralogy,
mostly from my personal experiences, might be interesting. Before my book-collecting days,
in 1940, Henry Sotheran, a London book-seller, had offered a complete copy for $30. About
the year 1960 I bought my first copy from Hugh A. Ford for $90 and sold it shortly
thereafter for $125. The next copy to come my way, in 1972, was bound in contemporary
three-quarter calf and I sold it for $600. In 1974 the booksellers Antiquaariat Junk
listed a copy for $950. My third copy came from Antiquaariat Junk in 1979 for; a price
more than double the price of that 1974 set, $2,050. It was in a contemporary German
binding of rather unattractive, mottled, black paper-covered boards with orange labels,
and was bound in ten volumes, five of plates and five of text. Less than one year later;
in 1980, my next set came also from Antiquaariat Junk, but this time at
$4,500,which was more than double (again) the price of the previous copy. (When I
was writing this I was reminded of the Pete Seeger folk song "We all keep-a-doppleing
- . . ," but Seeger was not referring to sets of British Mineralogy.) It was, however
a fine, tall copy, sumptuously bound in full contemporary stiff vellum with decorative
markings in gilt, and it came from the library of the Earl of Tyrconnel, retaining his
armorial bookplates. This copy I sold to Richard Hauck in 1982, at cost, but with the
understanding that I could retrieve it in exchange for another copy in the future. (I
really loved that set and was sad to have parted with it.) My next copy did not come until
1990, and I paid $3,500 for it. It had been rebound in modern, full, dark-green calf by
the prisoners of Warwick (Massachusetts) State Penitentiary and was of reasonably good
workmanship. It had some penciled holograph notations by Sir Arthur Russell with his
initials, and I used it to reclaim my vellum-bound set from Richard Hauck.

A complete set of British
Mineralogy in a contemporary binding

Since 1990, things Sowerby appear to have heated up significantly. At a
New York City auction sale on August 18, 1992, a really poor set with much damage to all
title pages, one that some booksellers might catalog as "a fair copy only," sold
for $5,280 to a European dealer who bought it, without inspection, for resale. Informed
insiders, myself included, were betting that it would be returned to the auction house,
but, apparently, we were wrong. More recently, Antiquaariat Junk (which firm I truly
believe is a price trend-setter for this work and, of course, other important books too)
listed a set in "contemporary half-green-calf, slightly rubbed," for 19,000
Dutch florins which, on October 22, 1992, amounted to $12,350. Incidentally, in that same
list they offered a copy of Exotic Mineralogy in "half-green-calf, slightly
rubbed" which may have been bound en suite with the British (but was not so stated)
for 21,000 Dutch florins or $13,700. The retail price these days for a fine, complete set
of British Mineralogy seems to be around $12,000 and moving upwards (naturally), and
somewhat more for a copy of Exotic. The traditional gap in price between British
and Exotic, which exists mostly in the mineral-book-collecting world and not in the
general book market, seems to be narrowing. This movement, in my opinion, is correct.
Whereas it is true that Exotic Mineralogy is a very rare book, British
Mineralogy is a much more important work and when you come right down to it, the
latter contains three times the number of colorplates of the former!

Since this article was begun, a lovely, limited, reprint edition of Exotic
Mineralogy in two volumes complete with facsimiles of all of the mineral plates in
fine color, has been produced by Wendell E. Wilson and the Mineralogical Record Library.
One can only hope that, with sufficient encouragement from the readers, a complete British
Mineralogy will be next.

CONCLUSION

The Sowerbys were unique. As a family their accomplishments are beyond comparison, and
there will almost certainly never be another like them. Mineral and book collectors,
especially those who want and can afford the wonderful Sowerby mineral works, will be
forever grateful for these beautiful publications.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A special thank you to Robert Thomas Curran, Jr. The following people also provided
help and ideas:

I am compiling a census of all extant copies of Sowerby's British and Exotic
Mineralogies and would appreciate hearing from any reader who has copies of either of
these works, or who knows of copies that are privately or institutionally owned (complete
or not). I should also appreciate hearing of any other related material by, or about, the
Sowerbys.

CLEEVELY; R. J. (1975) The Sowerbys and their publications, in the Light of the
manuscript material in the British Museum (Natural History). Journal of the Society for
the Bibliography of Natural History, 7, (part 4).

COLLINS, J. (1969) Supplementa Sowerbiana; Or A Catalogue of Books and Manuscripts
Written or Illustrated by Members of the Sowerby Family. Supplement to Catalogue No.
894 of Bernard Quaritch Ltd., London.

COLLINS, J. (1973) A note on the History of the Sowerby Family Archive. London.